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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27979395">Foggy Red Lies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabid_plotbunny/pseuds/rabid_plotbunny'>rabid_plotbunny</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, semi-serious crack!fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:35:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,936</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27979395</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabid_plotbunny/pseuds/rabid_plotbunny</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A night-hunt goes a little sideways....</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Foggy Red Lies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Okay, so first fic in a new fandom, please be kind!  </p><p>Also, if anyone has any ideas for a better title, feel free to suggest them!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was getting harder to breathe.  Harder to... well, everything, really.</p><p>The air was heavy with the scent of flowers, a heavy fog reducing the world around him to vague shadows in the soupy white.  His head felt like the mist had filled it, too, like it was stuffed with silk. Or fur.  He almost laughed at the thought of one of his bunnies somehow sleeping inside his head.  Laugh?  Yes, there was definitely something wrong with the fog.  His thoughts were sluggish and vague, his limbs growing heavier with each increasingly uncertain step.</p><p>Where was he?  Why was he there?  He struggled to force his mind to recall, with pitiful results.  He had been on a hunt, hadn't he?  And now he was in some sort of... forest?  The tall, narrow blurs to either side could be trees...?  It was too quiet for them to be people, right?  Or were they as affected by the fog and unable to... to... Where was he?  Why was he there?   Were those trees...?</p><p>A gentle tug on one arm called his wandering attention in that direction and he saw a blurred figure walking at his side, blurry even this close — was something wrong with his eyes?  He tried blinking, then squinting, but his sight stubbornly refused to clear — a blur of deep red topped with a flow of inky black.  Was that... Wei Ying?  Had he stripped down to his red layer, like back in the cave?  Why?  "W-w-" his voice wouldn't obey.</p><p>His companion said nothing, simply continuing to guide him along by the arm.</p><p>At least one of them seemed to be unaffected by the strange fog, and to know where they were going.  Somewhat comforted, he did his best to follow on uncertain feet.</p><p>It was so foggy.  Were they in a forest?  Those looked like trees....</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
The fog had crept in gradually, seeping in and thickening almost unnoticeably until the world was just a mess of swirling soupy white.  It was also so thickly floral-scented it was getting hard to breathe.</p><p>Was this part of the spirit's trap?  To disorient with the fog, suffocate them with the scent, then devour them once they were helpless?</p><p>Wei Wuxian shook his head to clear his wandering thoughts, alerted by that — his thoughts were usually running in a hundred different directions, but with a <em>little</em> more coordination, thank you! — and looked to his companion.</p><p>"We must be getting close, eh Lan Zhan?"</p><p>No reply.</p><p>"Lan Zhan?"  he looked over: no Lan Zhan.  "Lan Zhan?"</p><p>He stopped walking abruptly, scanned the swirling fog in all directions — no Lan Zhan.  He had, once again, completely vanished into the swirling white mist.  He was really going to have to get that man to wear some sort of bright color whenever they encountered mist.  Or stick some sort of glowing talisman on him or something.  Those flowy white Lan robes were just too... flowy and misty for this kind of thing!</p><p>Shaking his head once again as his thoughts wandered to thinking up specialized Lan fog-wear — maybe whites that changed to bright orange on contact with fog! — he pulled out a talisman and activated it, watching as it... did absolutely nothing to clear the mist.</p><p>Well, that answers that.  Definitely not a natural fog, then.</p><p>He pulled out another talisman, stuck it on himself and activated it.  Instantly, he found himself standing in a bubble of clean, purified air, the fog inside the barrier burned away by his own power.  It wasn't a huge bubble, maybe three or four meters in diameter, but it was enough to keep on the right path and give him at least a <em>little</em> warning of any incoming attacks.</p><p>Lan Zhan wasn't in the bubble.</p><p>Another quick talisman lit his own trail and he backtracked until the one trail became two.  Not too bad, only about five minutes between when when they had separated and when he had noticed.  How far could he have gotten in this mess?  And why had he wandered off in the first place?  If he had gone off to pee and gotten lost coming back, he was going to tease him sooooooo much!  Ha!</p><p>He was busy following Lan Zhan's glowy trail, thinking up different ways to tease him in any given situation when there was a glint of light near the edge of the bubble, beside the trail-glow.</p><p>Cautiously nearing that spot, all thoughts of teasing vanished under a razor-sharp wave of worry and concern.</p><p>Lying there, carelessly discarded on the forest floor, was Bichen.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
They had been walking for a long time.  How far did they have to go?  Where... Where were they going?  Oh, was that Wei... Wei... he couldn't think.  What was the rest of...  what was....</p><p>The hand on his arm guided him along unwaveringly.  He tried his best to keep up on leaden feet.  </p><p>It took him a long moment to realize that they had stopped.  He tried looking around but between the thick for and his blurry eyes could not make out much beyond the swirl of white, accompanied by vague shadows.  The shadows were... different, weren't they?  There was still some dark ones, but the majority of them were a deep red.  Or was that his eyes?  Why would shadows be red?  Why—</p><p>"Bow," came a hissed command, followed by a downward tug on his arm.  It sounded like the way one would hiss an order out of the side of their mouth at someone who was being insufferably rude.</p><p>He hadn't noticed that they had met anyone, but that was no excuse for his lack of manners.  He followed the tug down and knelt, then bowed a deep bow in apology.  His Uncle would be appalled at his lack of decorum.  Then again, his Uncle was appalled by just about everything about him these days....</p><p>Rising from the bow, he turned at the guiding hand's insistence.  Oh.  The shadows that way were mostly red, too.  Why were the shadows red?</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
The first layers of clothing were only a few steps further down the glowy trail past Bichen.  The next layers were a few steps past those.</p><p>As if the discarded Bichen hadn't been enough of a warning on its own, the clothing was more than that.  Wei Wuxian knew first-hand how difficult it was to get Lan Zhan to part with any of his clothing.  Heavens forbid he bare so much as a centimeter more skin than absolutely necessary!</p><p>But he kept finding layers, one after the other, all the way down to his underthings.  He stuffed all his companion's things into a pouch and couldn't help wondering — is there a butt-naked Lan Zhan wandering around in the fog?</p><p>A flutter of red caught his eye.  A ribbon, caught on a branch.  It was a deep red, embroidered with gold.  The very ends of the ribbon seemed darker, the color irregular, and it only took a moment's inspection to see that while the ribbon itself had been cleaned, the ends had been stained dark with blood.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
"Bow," came the hissed command, from his other side this time.</p><p>Hadn't he just done that?  He thought he had, but the insistent downward tug at his arm confused him.  Had he just thought that he had?  He really was being unforgivably rude if that was the case!</p><p>Sinking down to his knees, he bowed deeply.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
Wei Wuxian was full-out sprinting now, following the glowing trail.  The occasional thread or hair caught on a branch — red and clack, respectively — only served to push him to go faster.  If what he was thinking was going on was actually going on, he needed to find Lan Zhan <em>now</em>!!</p><p>One of the villages in this forest had hired them to put an end to their problem: something in the forest was making their young men disappear.  Any young man that went into the woods was at risk of never coming back.  Considering their village was <em>in</em> the woods, their young men were essentially prisoners in the village proper.  The only thing the villagers could recall from the time the disappearances started was the wedding of one of the village girls to a young man from the next village.</p><p>Being young-ish men themselves, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji decided to look into the matter.</p><p>And now Lan Zhan was missing.</p><p>"Lan Zhan!!" he yelled as he ran.  "Where are you?!  Lan Zhan!!"</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
"Bow," came the now-familiar hiss, accompanied by  an equally-familiar tug at his arm.</p><p>All right, so he was almost sure at this point that he had already done that.  Why was his head so fuzzy?  He hadn't truly been concerned as he was safely with W...  W...  his companion who wouldn't let anything bad happen to him, but now he wasn't sure.</p><p><em>Was</em> this W... W... that man?</p><p>He had to clear his head.  So he did what he always did when he needed to force his thoughts into some semblance of order.  Recite the Lan sect Rules.</p><p>Rule one was....</p><p>It was....</p><p>Was....</p><p>"Bow," came the hiss again, accompanied by a more insistent downward tug.</p><p>The tug was strong enough to unbalance him in his woozy state and he fell to his knees, catching himself on his hands before he went sprawling.  For the first time, he noticed that his arms were red.</p><p>Red?  Why were his arms red?  His hands, blurry as they were, seemed to be their normal pallor.</p><p>Something twinged in his brain.  There was some connection between his arms, the bows, and the forest.  He needed to <em>think</em>!</p><p>Rule one was....</p><p>It was....</p><p>"Lan Zhan!"  It was a voice at the faint edge of his hearing.  Odd after the almost dead silence of the wood.  "Lan Zhan!  Where are you?  Lan Zhan?"</p><p>That name... it was familiar somehow.  And he was sure he knew that voice.  Why...?</p><p>Rule one was....</p><p>"Bow," came the impatient hiss, this time with a push at his back.  "Bow, now!"</p><p>"Lan Zhan!"  It was closer now.</p><p>Lan... that was his clan, wasn't it?  Wait... Lan Zhan... that was <em>his</em> name!</p><p>"Where are you?  Lan Zhan!!"</p><p><em>He</em> was Lan Zhan.</p><p>As if that fact — his own name — was the missing piece of the puzzle, he recalled Rule One: Always trust Wei Ying.  Not a Lan sect Rule, but a Lan Zhan Rule.</p><p>"Wei Ying!" he called out.</p><p>"No, bow!" came the hiss from in front of him, then a hand at the back of his head was trying to pull him down with abnormal strength.</p><p>He fought against the hand, leaden limbs protesting every move but knowing with absolute certainty — even if he didn't know <em>why</em> — that bowing was the <em>last</em> thing he wanted to do just then.  "Wei Ying!"</p><p>"I'm coming, Lan Zhan!"  It was close now.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
Wei Wuxian burst into a forest clearing to find the source of the forest's troubles.  The clearing itself was littered with a dozen or so bodies — all young men, all dressed in red and gold, all with their throats ripped out.</p><p>Kneeling in the middle of the dead was Lan Zhan — so odd to see him dressed in something other that Lan clan white or blue, and admittedly a little disappointing that he wasn't actually naked after all — and another figure also clad in red, though the garments were a bit frayed and torn as if from long wear, hand on his head as she tried to force him to bow to her.</p><p>Wait.  Red.  Bow.  To her.... Oh heck no!</p><p>Quick as thought, a talisman was shooting through the air.  It struck the woman and sent her sprawling with a faint shriek.</p><p>Wei Wuxian hurried over to where Lan Zhan was climbing to his feet, though with none of his usual grace.  "Lan Zhan!  Are you all right?"</p><p>"Wei Ying," came the slightly slurred reply.  He tried to take a step and nearly fell.  Well, that answered that.</p><p>"Here, hold on," Wei Wuxian said.  He pulled out another talisman like the one on his own chest, stuck it to Lan Zhan and activated it.</p><p>He saw dazed eyes clear almost instantly, meeting his own.  "Wei Ying," he acknowledged.  "The ghost—"</p><p>"Seems to like you more than me,"  Wei Wuxian teased.  "Can't say I fault her taste!"</p><p>An infamous Lan glare was his reply.</p><p>They turned to the haunt, saw her glaring at them from just outside the purified bubble.  She would have been pretty enough back when she was alive, they could see that even now.  Her clothing was obviously the remnants of a set of wedding robes that had seen better days.  Oddly enough, despite the reasonable quality of her bridal finery, she wore no jewellery at all — not even so much as a wooden hair pin.</p><p>"Why are you doing this?  Why did you kill these men?"  Wei Wuxian asked her, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.  He was pretty sure he already knew the answer from the information they had gathered in the village, what he had seen here, and other similar night-hunts.</p><p>"Men are liars!  They all deserve to die!"</p><p>"Who lied to you?"</p><p>"He did! He came to our village and said he loved me! He took me from the village and we were supposed to we when we reached his.  But instead he killed me, dumped my body in the woods, and stole my jewellery and dowry!  He lied!  He lied and he killed me!  Men are liars!  I will kill them all!"</p><p>"If we bring him to justice, will you be satisfied?"</p><p>"No!  You are men!  You lie!  I will rip your lying throat out!"  She hurled herself at them, clawed hands outstretched, ignoring the purification that instantly began to burn her skin.</p><p>There was a flash of Lan-blue light, then she crumbled to ash.  Almost instantly, the fog began to clear.</p><p>"Well, that was a bit anti-climactic.  Also one of the worst divorces I've ever seen!"</p><p>"Divorce?"</p><p>"Ah, Lan Zhan!  How quickly you forget!  You're all in red, and you were on your last bows!"</p><p>Horrified eyes snapped down to confirm that <em>yes</em>, he <em>was</em> in marriage clothing.  Remembered the voice hissing 'bow!' at him, recalled... "We did not do the third," he said, relief obvious.</p><p>"It was pretty close," Wei Wuxian said with a grin.  "You were pretty low.  Are you sure it doesn't count?  You could be married to a ghost bride!"</p><p>Lan Wangji glared, straightened with all the affronted dignity he could muster.  "We did not finish the bows, we did not drink.  I am <em>not</em> wed."</p><p>"If you say so," came the cheeky reply.  "So, off to the next village to find the murderer?"</p><p>"Hm," Lan Zhan agreed.  Then he paused.  "Did... Do you know where my robes are?"  It wasn't a phrase he had ever thought he's need to say.  How could he misplace his own robes?!</p><p>"Your whites?  You must have dropped them in the woods somewhere on your way to your bride.  Hey!  Did she help you dress?  Lan Zhan!  Were you naked with your bride before taking your bows?  How scandalous!"</p><p>Lan Wangji's face flushed a red to match his robes but — having only vague impressions of what happened under the fog's influence — he could only sputter in protest.  Surely he wouldn't have-!  He couldn't have-!  Decorum would have forbid it, surely, even in his fuzzy-headed state!  But some of the layers of a set of wedding robes <em>were</em> quite difficult for one person to manage... Surely he hadn't....</p><p>It was at that point, trying to think about something, <em>anything</em> else other than a <em>serious</em> breach of propriety that he noticed that he was not holding his sword.  Nor was Wei Ying.  Where was Bichen?!</p><p>At least he could do something about that!  He focused, concentrated, Called.</p><p>A pouch jumped out of Wei Ying's sleeve and flopped around on the ground as if something inside was trying to get out.</p><p>"Ah!  Lan Zhan!  What are you doing?"</p><p>"Calling Bichen."</p><p>"Bi-oh.  Oh!  Yes, I found him in the dirt.  So careless, Lan Zhan!"  Wei Wuxian said as he grabbed the pouch.  He loosened the strings.  "See, I put him in here for safe-keeping!"</p><p>As soon as the strings were loose enough, Bichen flew from the pouch to Lan Wangji's waiting hand, a mass of white fabric tangled about the hilt and trailing back into the pouch like a flag.</p><p>"Oh, hey, look at that!" came a nervous laugh.  "I guess Bichen found your robes for you.  Wonder how they got in there, ha ha..."</p><p>Realizing that Wei Ying would have had him walk into the villages dressed in wedding robes for no reason but his own amusement, Lan Wangji's eyes narrowed into a glare that by all rights should have set the other man's clothes on fire.</p><p>Hmmm....</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br/>
"I can't believe you actually set my clothes on fire!  Lan Zhan!  So cruel!  What would your brother say?  I'm pretty sure there has to be a rule that says not to set other peoples' robes on fire!"</p><p>"No."</p><p>"No?!  Three-thousand and something rules and not one against setting people on fire?!"</p><p>"No setting people on fire except for cremations, but no rules about setting clothing on fire."</p><p>"That is a horrible, horrible oversight, Lan Zhan!  I will have to write to your brother to recommend it!"</p><p>"Hm."</p><p>They walked down the forest path to the next village to track down the murderer, Lan Zhan back in his white robes and Wei Ying — for lack of anything else — in Lan Zhan's discarded wedding finery.</p><p> </p><p>END</p>
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